11/30/2007 @ 1:30PM

Wall Street's Psychic Advisor

The 5 Rules of Thought: How to Use the Power of Your Mind To Get What You Want by Mary T. Browne ($24, Atria, 2007).

Wall Street abounds with legends about psychics. Andrew Carnegie and John Pierpont Morgan were among the titans of finance who were enamored of psychics and mediums. Spiritualism was something of a fad in those times.

In the present day, working out of her apartment in the western corner of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, psychic Mary T. Browne receives quite a few visits from Wall Street clientèle, who pay up to $400 for hour-long sessions. She conducts readings in her living room, under the gaze of a portrait of George Wehner, who in 1929 wrote the memoir A Curious Life about his experience as a psychic medium who transmitted messages from the dead to the living.

When Browne is on, she talks a blue streak and a kind of nervous energy overwhelms her slim frame. The process is so exhausting for her that she can only do three or four readings a day. Is she for real? I visited her and she bombarded me with observations. She already knew my profession, and once she saw me, was able to quickly surmise my age and economic status. The art of “cold reading” would be to overwhelm me with guesses based on what little she knew. By the end of it, I only remembered the bits she got right and completely forgot anything that she didn’t. I very much could have fallen for the old “cold reading” trick. Doesn’t matter. I felt terrific after talking to her–focused and optimistic.

Browne’s not telling people what stocks to buy or even what kind of car to purchase. While it appears that she’s reading a subject’s mind and foretelling the future, what Mary Browne is really doing is telling her clients how to think. She is like the I-Ching or a deck of tarot cards, the woman described in the move I Heart Huckabees as a “spiritual petit four.” Browne becomes an object that her clients can use to focus their minds.

In her new book, The 5 Rules of Thought, Browne shows where her clients get tripped up. First, they don’t know what they want. Then, they can’t visualize getting there, can’t stick to a decision, lose faith in their abilities and finally give up. Those are Browne’s principles stated in the negative. In her book, they’re given as positive advice: Decide what you want, see it happen, stick to the plan, believe it can work and hammer away at the problem until you get the results you want.

It isn’t complex psychology. Browne’s book boils down to encouraging a positive attitude and work ethic. As one of her past customers remarked, even though Browne might tell a client what their future holds, “You still have to be good.” Or, as Browne puts it, “I’m not trying to sell anyone a fantasy. There are ways of thinking that will make a person much happier.”

Browne’s success offers a clue about what Wall Streeters really want these days–a way to organize their thoughts and freedom from doubt. It’s been that way since Carnegie and Morgan. The 5 Rules of Thought is a brisk read and probably a great holiday gift to anyone who really needs some peace of mind.